1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to methods, computer-based systems and computer program products for managing documents or files.
2. Discussion of the Background
An application service provider (ASP) is an entity, typically a company, that offers users (individual customers, companies, enterprises, etc.) access over a network, such as the Internet, to applications and related services that would otherwise have to be located on the customer's local computer. For example, ASPs can provide searchable databases of legal, medical, financial, educational, scientific, or marketing documents. Alternatively, some companies provide in-house type ASPs wherein applications are not on the company's employee's personal computers, but instead on a company computer accessible by the employees via a company network. For the purpose of this document, the term “ASP” is thus intended to be broadly interpreted and to include a provider that allows a user to use an application not loaded on the user's computer.
An example of a conventional network of ASPs connected via the Internet is shown in FIG. 1, which shows four exemplary document ASPs 10–40 connected to an Internet 50. In this example, a user 70 may independently connect to the ASPs 10–40 via the Internet 50 and download documents, either to view on the screen of a personal computer (PC) 80, to print with a printer 90, to store in a local storage device 100 and/or a medium drive 110.
Today, there are a great number of ASPs providing various kinds of services and documents. For example, an ASP may provide legal documents, while another may provide marketing documents, yet another may provide educational, scientific, financial, or medical documents, etc. Furthermore, different ASPs may provide these documents in different formats, for example, using different graphical user interfaces (GUIs). When a user needs different kinds of documents, for example, a legal document, a financial document, a scientific document, and each of which is stored in different ASPs, the user must search, find and access an ASP that provides the desired documents. When a number of different kinds of documents are desired, the user may have to search, find and access several ASPs. This multiple searching requirement is time consuming for the user. In addition, because various ASPs may provide documents using different formats, the user may have to re-format the documents so as to obtain documents of a single format. This re-formatting is also burdensome on the user. Because most ASP charge their customers for their services rendered, typically on a pay-per-use basis or a contract basis, the customers, or users, may have to pay several bills, one for each ASP used. This multiple billing system thus imposes an extra burden on the user.
In an effort to alleviate these problems, a system, computer program product and method of managing documents retrieved from, or stored to, ASPs were disclosed in commonly owned co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/684,965, which is incorporated herein by reference.
The management system, computer program product and method disclosed in Ser. No. 09/684,965 are configured to, inter alia, search for ASPs over a network and; retrieve documents, URLs and other data; store documents and data at the ASPs, within a document manager, or at the user; format documents; generate and issue unified bills from a plurality of bills from a plurality of ASPs. The document manager can provide consulting advice to the user regarding document managing, and can manage the stored documents.
In order to provide some security management of documents, Ser. No. 09/684,965 discloses associating an access level with documents stored at the ASPs so as to identify which documents a specific user can access via the document manager. While this access level scheme may be satisfactory for some applications, it may not be suitable for all document management systems because once a person who can access the documents (a person having the access level of the document) makes copies of the documents and distributes the copies, it becomes difficult to manage the security of the document. In addition, the security of the system may be compromised when users lose or forget their access levels, when authorized users become un-authorized, or when unauthorized users acquire, either by fraud or mistake, the access level of authorized users.